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Hebcal 2026 Year in Review

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Hebcal is a volunteer labor of love because our mission is to increase awareness of Jewish holidays and to help Jews to be observant of the mitzvot. We’ve been hard at work this past year making Hebcal faster, more reliable and a more complete resource. Here is a summary of the changes we’ve made (major and minor) during the past 10 months.

1. Hebcal.com website

Sign in with Google or Apple

In September we added optional Sign in with Google and Sign in with Apple. Hebcal never asks for a password; we rely on Google or Apple to confirm who you are.

You don’t need an account to use Hebcal, and you never will. But signing in makes a few things easier:

  • No more confirmation emails. When you subscribe to weekly Shabbat candle-lighting emails or Yahrzeit reminders using the same email address as your Google or Apple account, your subscription is activated immediately, without the usual “click the link in this message” step.
  • All of your subscriptions in one place. The new Account page lists your Shabbat candle-lighting subscription and each of your Yahrzeit, Hebrew Birthday and Anniversary calendars, with links to edit or unsubscribe.
  • One-click save for Yahrzeit calendars. When you’re signed in, the Email reminders button on the Yahrzeit + Anniversary Calendar page saves your list and turns on reminders in a single step. Your most recently updated calendars are shown at the top of the page.

Existing subscribers don’t need to do anything. Subscriptions are still tied to your email address, so if you sign in with the same address, your existing subscriptions will show up on your Account page automatically.

If you use Apple’s Hide My Email feature, your reminders are sent to your private relay address and Apple forwards them to you.

Holidays and observance

Swords of Iron War Memorial Day

We added Israel’s new Swords of Iron War Memorial Day, the memorial day for the fallen of the war that began on October 7, 2023. It is observed on 24 Tishrei (postponed to Sunday when that date falls on Shabbat), and it appears on both the Israel and Diaspora calendars when Modern Holidays are enabled.

Candle-lighting in Israel

The default candle-lighting time for cities in Israel is now 20 minutes before sunset, up from 18 minutes, which better matches the common custom in Israel. Jerusalem (40 minutes) and Haifa and Zikhron Ya’akov (30 minutes) keep their local customs.

Havdalah by degrees

You can now choose Havdalah time by degrees below the horizon instead of a fixed number of minutes after sunset. Look for the new field in the Candle-lighting & Fast times section of the custom calendar page and on the Shabbat times page. Use 7.083° for three medium-sized stars, 8.5° for three small stars (our default), or 16.1° for Rabbeinu Tam. Weekly Shabbat email subscriptions remember the setting too. Thanks to the Hebcal user who suggested this on GitHub.

Chametz times for Erev Pesach

Erev Pesach now includes the times for finish eating chametz and Biur Chametz (burning the chametz) when you’ve chosen a location. When Erev Pesach falls on Shabbat, Biur Chametz moves to Friday morning, as it is practiced.

Latest Kiddush Levana

Calendars with candle-lighting times and Rosh Chodesh now include a monthly Latest Kiddush Levana event, calculated for your location. We use the Maharil’s opinion (halfway between moladot). If the deadline falls during the day, we move it back to dawn (alot hashachar) that morning, and if it falls on Shabbat or Yom Tov, we move it back to candle-lighting time. When we move the time, the event description now says so, for example: Latest Kiddush Levana (Maharil): Tue, Nov 24, 2026, 6:28am (adjusted to 5:37am Alot haShachar). The description also lists the earliest times (3 and 7 days after the molad) and the latest time after 15 days, so you can follow whichever opinion your community does.

Our Zmanim iCalendar feed also gained the earliest and latest Kiddush Levana times, plus the moment of the molad, on the days they occur.

To prevent Latest Kiddush Levana events from appearing on your calendar, set your Havdalah preference to 0 minutes past sundown (which disables both Havdalah times and Latest Kiddush Levana) or uncheck the Rosh Chodesh option.

Sefirat HaOmer

The Omer count pages now include the corresponding word of Ana BeKoach and the word and letter of Lamnatzeach (Psalm 67) for each night of the Omer. On larger screens there’s also a new navigation grid to jump to any day of the Omer.

Homepage candle-lighting times

If you’ve looked up Shabbat times for your city before, the Hebcal homepage now shows this week’s candle-lighting and Havdalah times for your location at the top of the page, following your preferred minutes or degrees.

Torah readings

Haftarot of Admonition and Consolation. Parsha pages and calendar event descriptions now label the three Haftarot of Admonition (before Tish’a B’Av) and the seven Haftarot of Consolation (after), for example “Fifth Haftarah of Consolation”. This includes the rare case where Ki Teitzei combines the 3rd and 5th.

Chabad custom. When the Chabad custom calls for a different Haftarah, the parsha pages now show it, along with the reason.

Yom HaAtzma’ut. We added the Torah reading and Haftarah (Isaiah 10:32-12:6, the same as Pesach VIII) used by communities that read on Yom HaAtzma’ut.

Kohelet in Israel. When Sukkot falls on Shabbat, Israeli communities read Ecclesiastes on the first day of Sukkot. We now get this right.

Hebrew parsha summaries. Hebrew-language RSS feeds and calendar downloads now carry Hebrew summaries of each parsha (courtesy of Sefaria) and Hebrew holiday descriptions, instead of English.

Daily Learning calendars

We added four new study cycles to our daily learning calendars this year:

929: Tanakh B’yachad is a synchronized chapter-a-day reading program, named after the 929 chapters of the Hebrew Bible. Participants read one chapter a day, five days a week, completing the entire Tanakh in about three and a half years. Each event links to the chapter on Sefaria.

Amud HaYomi (Dirshu) covers one amud (one side of a page) of the Babylonian Talmud each day, a slower pace than Daf Yomi that completes Shas in about five years.

Daf HaYomi B’Halacha (Dirshu) follows Dirshu’s daily Mishnah Berurah program.

Tanya Yomi is the daily study of the Tanya by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, completing all five parts every year from 19 Kislev through 18 Kislev. It has separate divisions for leap years and regular years. You’ll find it in a new Chasidut section on the Daily Learning page.

Each of these is also available as a ready-made calendar subscription on our Daily Learning page. We also improved Tanakh Yomi so each day shows its verse range, and fixed sedarim that cross from one book to the next.

Localization

  • We added Dutch translations, following Dutch Wikipedia conventions for transliteration.
  • French translations now cover the Shabbat times page.
  • The Ashkenazi transliterations were reworked with more consistent rules for vowels and consonants (for example, Ta’anis B’choros and Shabbos M’vorchim), and now cover the zmanim.
  • Hebrew spellings and niqqud were corrected for several holidays and readings, including חֹל הַמּוֹעֵד and סֻכּוֹת.
  • When you look up Shabbat times for a city outside the US, the page now uses that country’s preferred language where we have a translation.

Miscellaneous / UI and usability

Hebcal now remembers whether you prefer a Gregorian or a fully Hebrew calendar.

The Yahrzeit + Anniversary Calendar form is more compact, and subscribing to email reminders is a single click when we already know your address.

Pages load faster. Images use the WebP and AVIF formats, the most important styles are included directly in each page, and we removed about half of the unused CSS. Hebcal also has a new SVG icon that looks sharp in browser tabs and email inboxes.

We updated our privacy policy. Email subscriber logs are now automatically deleted after 18 months.

We refreshed the descriptions of 34 holidays from Wikipedia.

2. Calendar downloads and subscriptions

To keep our servers responsive, we put some limits on very large or very distant calendars:

Calendar subscriptions (Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook) are limited to 2,400 events. If a subscription would go over that limit, it now starts 12 weeks in the past and adds a note explaining why. See Number of years in calendar feed subscriptions for details. Yahrzeit + Anniversary subscriptions are limited to 1,200 events and no longer include events older than 13 weeks.

Supported years. Torah portion pages, Omer pages and calendar downloads now cover Gregorian years 1752 through 2499 (Hebrew years 5513 through 6260). The Candle-lighting Times Year at a Glance covers the past 4 years and the next 20. The Hebrew Date Converter still works for any year.

CSV files now always start with a UTF-8 byte order mark, so Microsoft Excel displays Hebrew and accented characters correctly.

3. User support now by email

We retired the Hebcal Community Support forum on UserEcho. If you have a question, a bug report or a feature request, please email support@hebcal.com. Many common questions are already answered in our Help section. A historical archive of community support messages has been migrated to Google Groups (email addresses and phone numbers redacted for privacy).

4. Hebcal for Apple Watch 2

This fall we released Hebcal for Apple Watch 2, the first major update to the watch app in five years. It’s available now from the Apple App Store.

Sunset and candle-lighting times. Turn on Use Location in Settings and the Hebrew date rolls over at sunset instead of 8:00pm. Friday and holiday candle-lighting times, Havdalah and Chanukah candles then appear in the app and on the watch face. Tap a day to see the details on a Zmanim card. Your location stays on the watch and is used only for these calculations.

The Omer. During the Omer, tap the day to see the count, the Sefirah, the word and letter of Psalm 67, and the Ana BeKoach words.

A calendar you can browse. The app shows the next two weeks day by day, followed by Shabbatot and holidays for a full year, grouped by month.

The new version requires watchOS 10.6 or later. The complications were rebuilt on Apple’s newer WidgetKit, and the ones you already set up should carry over.

5. Developer web APIs

Developers are a small but important part of our audience, and we made a number of improvements this year.

API documentation. All of our REST APIs are now described in a single OpenAPI specification with an interactive Swagger UI page where you can try requests in your browser. The spec documents every parameter, its default value and the specific reasons a request can return 400 Bad Request. See also our Developer APIs overview.

AI agents and MCP. Our Model Context Protocol (MCP) server at https://www.hebcal.com/mcp is now listed in the official MCP Registry as io.github.hebcal/hebcal and has a new shabbat-times tool for candle-lighting and Havdalah times. To help AI agents find the right data instead of scraping HTML pages, we now publish /llms.txt, an RFC 9727 /.well-known/api-catalog, an MCP server card, and Markdown versions of the homepage for clients that send Accept: text/markdown.

New fields and options:

  • The Jewish calendar REST API includes the exact instant of the molad, the Ana BeKoach and Lamnatzeach words for each night of the Omer, the Chabad Haftarah where it differs, and an optional Tachanun field.
  • New parameters customize when fasts begin and end, in degrees or minutes: fsd/fsm for the start of minor fasts, fed/fem for the end of minor fasts, and tbed/tbem for the end of Tish’a B’Av. The td parameter sets Havdalah by degrees below the horizon.
  • The Zmanim API adds zmanim according to the Baal HaTanya, and the molad and Kiddush Levana times.
  • CORS preflight (OPTIONS) requests are now supported, so browser-based apps can call the APIs directly.

Rate limits. API responses now include the IETF draft standard RateLimit-Policy and RateLimit headers, so your code can see the limits instead of discovering them the hard way. The limit is 150 requests per 10 seconds per client (60 requests per 3 seconds for the Hebrew Date Converter). If you go over, you’ll get 429 Too Many Requests with a Retry-After header. PDF and CSV calendar downloads can also return 429 during busy periods; please wait and try again.

Constraints to be aware of:

  • Date-range requests to the Hebrew Date Converter and Zmanim APIs are limited to 180 days per request.
  • Calendars are limited to 10 years per request.
  • Undocumented FullCalendar output for Yahrzeit calendars was removed.

Several of these APIs (the Hebrew Date Converter, Zmanim, Shabbat JSON, city autocomplete and PDF downloads) moved to a new, much faster backend written in Go. The URLs and output formats didn’t change. If you notice any difference, please let us know.

Why do I see Hebcal events twice?

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Seeing every holiday two or three times in your calendar app is one of the most common questions we get. The good news is that Hebcal itself almost never sends duplicate events. Duplicates nearly always mean that Hebcal events have ended up in your calendar app more than once, and cleaning that up is usually quick.

Here are the most common causes, from most to least likely.

1. You subscribed more than once

This happens easily. You might have subscribed on your phone and again on your computer, or subscribed a few years ago and then again after changing a setting. Each subscription is its own calendar, so each one shows its own copy of every event.

First, look at your list of calendars:

  • Google Calendar: look under Other calendars in the left-hand column.
  • iPhone and iPad: tap Calendars at the bottom of the Calendar app.
  • Outlook: look under My calendars and Other calendars in the folder pane.

If you see more than one Hebcal calendar (they often have names like “Jewish Holidays” or “Hebcal” followed by a city), remove the extras:

2. You subscribed and also imported a file

If you ever clicked Download and opened the file, those events were copied directly into your own calendar, mixed in with your personal appointments. They aren’t connected to Hebcal anymore, so they never update, and removing a subscription won’t remove them.

A good clue is that the extra copies appear in the same color as your personal calendar. To remove imported events:

Please note that selecting and deleting many events at once only works in classic Outlook for Windows. In the new Outlook and Outlook on the web, imported events have to be deleted one at a time, which is one more reason we recommend subscribing.

3. Two different Hebcal calendars overlap

Sometimes people have two separate Hebcal calendars that are both doing their jobs. For example, a holiday calendar and a yahrzeit calendar might each be set to show the Hebrew date every day. Or a Shabbat times calendar and a Custom Calendar might both include candle-lighting times. In that case, nothing is broken. Decide which calendar should show each kind of event and turn that option off in the other one.

4. It’s actually a reminder

Yahrzeit and anniversary calendars can include an optional “Calendar reminder day before” event, which can look like a duplicate the day before the yahrzeit. If you’d rather not have it, uncheck that option on the Yahrzeit + Anniversary Calendar page. See how to make changes to a yahrzeit calendar.

5. Your iPhone is showing the Hebrew date on its own

Apple’s Calendar app has a built-in feature called Alternate Calendars. When it’s set to Hebrew, your iPhone shows the Hebrew date in small Hebrew letters underneath each day in the month view. Several people have noticed this for the first time after updating to iOS 26.

This setting comes from Apple, not from Hebcal. Turning it off won’t remove or change any of your Hebcal holidays, candle-lighting times or yahrzeits. To turn it off:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Tap Apps, then Calendar.
  3. Tap Alternate Calendars.
  4. Choose Off.

If you like having the Hebrew date there, you’re welcome to leave it on. Just read the next section so you don’t end up seeing it twice.

6. It’s something else!

Still seeing double after checking all of these? Please contact us and tell us which calendar app you use. A screenshot of your list of calendars is a big help.

Subscribe vs. download: which did I do, and why does it matter?

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Hebcal gives you two ways to get Jewish calendar events into your calendar app: you can subscribe to a calendar feed, or you can download a file and import it. They look the same at first, since either way the holidays show up on your calendar. But they behave very differently over time, and a lot of the questions we get (“Why didn’t my calendar update?” “How do I get rid of these?” “Why does Outlook say I’m out of the office?”) come down to which one was used.

The short version

We recommend subscribing for almost everyone. Here’s how the two compare:

Subscribe (recommended)Download and import
Where the events liveIn a separate calendar that you can show, hide, color or removeCopied into your own personal calendar, mixed in with your appointments
Updates and correctionsAutomatic, usually within a day (Google Calendar can take longer)Never
Future yearsRolls forward on its own each yearOnly the years you downloaded
Changes to a yahrzeit listAppear automaticallyDelete the old events and import again
Free/busy statusDoesn’t affect your availabilityHolidays may make you look busy or out of office
Removing itOne clickDelete events one at a time, or select them in bulk

How can I tell which one I have?

Look at your list of calendars in your calendar app.

  • If Hebcal appears as its own entry in the list, with its own name and color, you subscribed.
  • If the Hebcal events are mixed into a calendar called something like “Calendar,” “Home” or your own name, and they’re the same color as your appointments, you imported them.

It’s possible to have both. If you see every holiday twice, that’s a likely reason. See Why do I see Hebcal events twice?

How do I subscribe?

On any Hebcal calendar page, look for the buttons for Apple, Google or Outlook. Those buttons create a subscription. Our step-by-step instructions cover each app:

If you’d like to switch from imported events to a subscription, remove the imported events first (Google · Mac · Outlook for Windows · Outlook for Mac), then subscribe.

Outlook shows me as Out of Office on Jewish holidays

This only happens with imported events. When Outlook imports all-day holiday events into your main calendar, it may treat them as time you’re unavailable, so coworkers see you as busy or out of office. Subscribed calendars are kept separate and don’t affect your free/busy status. Hebcal never marks Shabbat as busy.

To fix it, remove the imported events and subscribe instead.

When does downloading make sense?

Downloading is still useful in a few situations: if your calendar program doesn’t support subscriptions, if you need a file to load into a spreadsheet or another system, or if your workplace blocks calendar subscriptions. If you only want one year of events in Outlook, here’s a tip that will save you trouble later:

  1. Click Download and choose the .ics file.
  2. In Outlook, import it into a new, separate calendar, not your main calendar.
  3. When you no longer need it, delete that whole calendar in one step.

Yahrzeit questions: when do I light the candle? What if I don’t know the year?

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The Yahrzeit + Anniversary Calendar helps you remember the anniversary of a loved one’s death on the Hebrew calendar each year. Here are answers to the questions we hear most often.

When do I light the yahrzeit candle?

On the Hebrew calendar, each day begins at sunset. So the yahrzeit begins on the evening before the date shown in your calendar. Most people light the yahrzeit candle that evening, around sundown, and let it burn for the full 24 hours.

Hebcal places the yahrzeit on the daytime (Gregorian) date. If you’d like a nudge to light the candle the night before, check the Calendar reminder day before option when you create your calendar. Hebcal can also send you an email reminder each year.

A yahrzeit that falls on Shabbat or a holiday is usually observed with the candle lit before Shabbat or the holiday begins. Please ask your rabbi about your community’s custom.

What does “After sunset” mean?

Check the After sunset box if your loved one passed away after sunset but before midnight. Because the Hebrew day begins at sunset, that time belongs to the next Hebrew date. If you’re not sure, it’s usually best to leave it unchecked, and confirm with family or a funeral home if you can.

I only know the Hebrew date

Use the Hebrew Date Converter to find the Gregorian date of death first, then enter that date on the Yahrzeit calendar. If you only have the date as Hebrew letters, for example from a gravestone, our guide to the numerical values of Hebrew letters can help you read it.

I don’t know the year

Hebcal needs a year to calculate the yahrzeit. For most months, using your best estimate of the year will give you the right date in future years.

The exceptions are deaths in Adar, Cheshvan or Kislev. Whether a year has two months of Adar, or whether Cheshvan and Kislev have 29 or 30 days, changes from year to year, and that can affect the yahrzeit. If the death was in one of these months, try to find the exact year. (Family records, an obituary or a gravestone often have it.)

Hebcal’s date is different from another website or my synagogue

That usually comes down to one of two things:

  • The After sunset setting was different in one of the two places.
  • The death was in Adar, Cheshvan or Kislev, where different communities follow different customs. Hebcal’s approach is explained in Adar, Cheshvan and Kislev anniversaries.

Some communities also observe the first yahrzeit differently. For all matters of halacha, consult your local rabbi.

How do I change or add names?

See how to make changes to a yahrzeit or anniversary calendar. If you have a long list of names, you can import them from a CSV file.

Can Hebcal calculate the end of shloshim or 11 months of Kaddish?

Not yet. Customs for counting these periods vary, so we recommend asking your rabbi.

Daylight saving time changed where I live. Are Hebcal’s times correct?

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From time to time, a government decides to change its daylight saving time rules. It might stay on daylight time all year, stop changing the clocks, or move the date of the change. When that happens, Hebcal’s candle-lighting and Havdalah times need to be recalculated. This change often takes a few weeks to implement.

Where does Hebcal get time zone information?

Every location on Hebcal, whether you search by ZIP code or city, is linked to a time zone such as America/New_York or Asia/Jerusalem. The rules for each time zone, including when daylight saving time begins and ends, come from the IANA time zone database. This is the same open-source database used by nearly every computer, phone and website in the world.

Hebcal first calculates sunset as a moment in time, and then uses those time zone rules to show it on your local clock. So the sunset calculation itself doesn’t change when the clocks do. Only the time displayed changes.

How long does it take for Hebcal to update?

When a government announces a change, here’s what usually happens:

  1. Volunteers who maintain the IANA time zone database publish an update.
  2. That update makes its way into the software Hebcal runs on, in particular Debian Linux and Node.js.
  3. We update Hebcal’s servers with the new version.

This usually takes a few weeks. If a government announces a change on short notice, it can happen faster. If you notice a problem close to the date of a change, it may simply be that the updated data isn’t available yet.

Do I need to do anything?

  • If you subscribed to a Hebcal calendar, no. Your calendar will update on its own after the fix. Calendar apps check for updates about once a day, though Google Calendar can take a bit longer.
  • If you downloaded a file or printed a calendar, yes. Those don’t update. Please download or print a new copy after the change takes effect.

A note about Arizona

Most of Arizona doesn’t observe daylight saving time, but the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona does. Hebcal uses the time zone that matches each ZIP code or city, so if your times look an hour off in Arizona, please double-check that you entered the right location.

My times look exactly one hour off

A time that is off by exactly one hour almost always points to a time zone problem rather than a sunset calculation problem. A few things to check:

If the times on Hebcal.com itself are off, please contact us with your ZIP code or city, a screenshot, and which calendar app you use. We’ll look into it right away.